Marcelo Gomes
Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre
Marcelo Gomes, a native of Brazil, began his dance studies at the age of 5 at the Helena Lobato and Dalal Aschcar ballet schools in Rio de Janeiro. Upon winning the Revelation Prize at the Festival of Dance in Joinville in 1993, he traveled to the United States to continue his training at the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida, as well as at the schools of the Boston Ballet, Houston Ballet, and Cuballet, where he studied under Alicia Alonso.
Marcelo Gomes joined American Ballet Theatre in 1997 as a member of the Corps de Ballet, and rose quickly through the ranks, being promoted to Soloist in 2000 and Principal Dancer in 2002.
Marcelo Gomes’s performances have been seen throughout the world. In addition to his touring with American Ballet Theatre, he has appeared at many international dance festivals, and has been a guest artist with the Kirov Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Houston Ballet, Teatro Colon, Teatro Municipal Do Rio de Janeiro, Universal Ballet, and New York City Ballet. He accompanied Alessandra Ferri on her farewell tour in Japan and Italy in 2008.
Marcelo Gomes has recently begun a successful choreographic career, and has created pieces for dancers from American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, La Scala and Kings of the Dance. His ballet Apothéose, created for Julie Kent and Roberto Bolle, had its premiere on the opening night of American Ballet Theatre’s Metropolitan Opera House engagement in May 2013. His most recent work, Aftereffect, was performed by ABT at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C. in 2014.
Since 2012 Marcelo Gomes has been Guest Principal with the Mikhailovsky Ballet Theatre.
He has performed in virtually every full-length classical ballet in the company’s repertoire, including Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Albrecht in Giselle, Prince Siegfried, Benno, and von Rothbart in Swan Lake, Solor in La Bayadere, Prince Desire in Sleeping Beauty, Franz in Coppelia, Espada and Basilio in Don Quixote, Prince Charming in Cinderella, Onegin and Prince Gremin in Onegin, Conrad, Ali the Slave, and Lankendem in Le Corsaire, the Cavalier in The Nutcracker, the Moor in Othello, Jeanne de Brienne and Abderakhman in Raymonda, Lescaut and Des Grieux in Manon, and Pyotr in The Bright Stream. Mr. Gomes has performed leading roles in the works of George Balanchine, Mikhail Fokine, Anthony Tudor, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Jerome Robbins, Sir Frederick Ashton, John Cranko, and Martha Graham, and has worked with, as well as created roles for, Twyla Tharp, William Forsythe, Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, Jiri Kylian, Lar Lubovitch, James Kudelka, Nacho Duato, Jorma Elo, Benjamin Millepied, Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky.
Mr. Gomes was awarded second place at the National Society of Arts and Letters in 1994, and was the recipient of the Hope Prize at Lausanne in 1996. In 2008, he was the recipient of the prestigious Prix Benois de la Dance award in Moscow.
